WOW Review after almost 1 Year

[fractaled]

I think that's absolutely correct.  I think they know this though.  They have said repeatedly that the reason the new level cap is going to be so low in the expansion is because they want people to actually have something to do when they hit 70 this time instead of Raid/Rep/BG all over again.
[right][snapback]94747[/snapback][/right]

I'm not sure I follow that.

In all the content they've added since the beginning, they've added (including 1.9)
(raid/guilded content)
- two 40-man instances
- two 40-man raid world bosses (and maybe some dragons too?)
- two 20-man instances
("solo" content)
- two 5-man instances (at most 5 if you want to count separate wings, 2 of which are ~45ish, and 1 ~55ish)
- raventusk village
- darkmoon fair
(mixed content)
- 3 battlegrounds
- class revamps
(anything i'm forgetting?)

and the raid panel indicates the following:

Worldwide, every weeknight during prime time there are approximately 500 Molten Core instances running (15,000 players), 150 Onyxia instances (2,500 players), 250 Blackwing Lair instances (6,000 players) and 700 Zul'Gurub instances (10,000). On the weekend, there are 800 Molten Core runs being made.

(back of the envelope calculations warning)
That's 33.5k players on weekdays and 160% (800 / 500) (53.6k) on weekends. Note "worldwide" is specified above. Let's assume that there are 2 million subs worldwide (last I heard there were 4m), and let's assume that each day we get a totally different set of players (unrealistic), and let's be generous and round 33.5k up to 40k and 53.6k up to 80k. That's 40k * 5 (weekdays) + 80k * 2 (weekends) = 360k "raiders". Which is less than 20% of 2 million. And that was with me being generous (i.e. overstating the "raiding" population) every step of the way. (It's not hard to come up with numbers around 5%).

The point being that about half of the new content is targetted at raiders, and yet they make up less than one fifth of the population. I've heard that in MMOs the hardcore gamers form the linchpin of the community, but I'm not so sure of that myself. Less so with WoW.

The other point being, that if they wanted to give 60s something more to do besides grind faction/battlegrounds, they've had the opportunity.

[Kevin]

I'm not sure I follow that.

In all the content they've added since the beginning, they've added (including 1.9)
(raid/guilded content)
- two 40-man instances
- two 40-man raid world bosses (and maybe some dragons too?)
- two 20-man instances
("solo" content)
- two 5-man instances (at most 5 if you want to count separate wings, 2 of which are ~45ish, and 1 ~55ish)
- raventusk village
- darkmoon fair
(mixed content)
- 3 battlegrounds
- class revamps
(anything i'm forgetting?)
[right][snapback]95013[/snapback][/right]

You forgot Thorium Point, Cenarion Hold, battlegrounds, and really they turned the old high end grind instances (scholo, strat, etc) into much easier for the more casual players though I'm not sure that counts as content add, but it makes that content easier to see for some.

The PvP battlegrounds can be considered "solo" content as much as the 5 man instances as well at least for a segment of the population. Pick-up groups for them are about the same crap shoot and level of fun as PuG instance runs. :) So yeah it's been raid heavy on the added content but there are a few other things that help with solo/small group content.

[savaughn]

I'm not sure I follow that.

<snip>

The point being that about half of the new content is targetted at raiders, and yet they make up less than one fifth of the population. I've heard that in MMOs the hardcore gamers form the linchpin of the community, but I'm not so sure of that myself. Less so with WoW.
[right][snapback]95013[/snapback][/right]

So, it looks like we both agree (as I noted in my post) that the only end game content they've provided to date has been raid/rep/BG material. Brilliant!

What don't you follow when I noted that the designers have said explicitly that they know this has not satisfied their player population and are working to give you a greater variety of material to do (including vastly more solo and 5-man material). Are you suggesting that because they're still working to finish the stuff they started putting into the game a year ago that this somehow prevents them from delivering on this new promise? Doesn't the radical Silithus rewrite (targetted explicitly at adding new solo content for lvl 60's) prove this quite eloquently?

Or are you suggesting that in delivering end game raid content that players were screaming for a year ago, they have somehow failed to satisfy their player base?

[fractaled]

Brilliant!

Brilliant!

Wasn't really disagreeing with you so much as thinking out loud :) If you replace "want" with "plan for" in your grandparent post I understand it better. Also, I don't really see how that has to do with the level cap bump only being 10 levels. You'd think they'd want it to be a bigger bump for the soloers (I'm not recommending that though). That's what I didn't follow :).

What don't you follow when I noted that the designers have said explicitly that they know this has not satisfied their player population and are working to give you a greater variety of material to do (including vastly more solo and 5-man material).&nbsp; Are you suggesting that because they're still working to finish the stuff they started putting into the game a year ago that this somehow prevents them from delivering on this new promise?

It certainly effects the timing of it all. Why do they have to wait till the expansion (which is what, 5+ months away?) to satisfy the majority of their player population? Why are they adding another set of 20+40 man instances in 1.9 instead of a 5+20 or 5+40?

Doesn't the radical Silithus rewrite (targetted explicitly at adding new solo content for lvl 60's) prove this quite eloquently?

Having quit 5 months ago I'm honestly not too knowledgeable about it :)

Or are you suggesting that in delivering end game raid content that players were screaming for a year ago, they have somehow failed to satisfy their player base?
[right][snapback]95108[/snapback][/right]

The vocal minority has been screaming for them, and yes they have failed to satisfy some of their player base by sating that minority.

[fractaled]

You forgot Thorium Point, Cenarion Hold,

Yeah, I left before they added those, so I didn't know how big they were. I.e. Bloodvenom post vs Camp Mojache.

battlegrounds

I mentioned that one :)

The PvP battlegrounds can be considered "solo" content as much as the 5 man instances as well at least for a segment of the population.
[right][snapback]95031[/snapback][/right]

I was a little vague when I said "about half" because some of it depends on how you count :). BGs favor those with better equipment and better teamwork, both of which favor the raiders/guilded. On the other hand, assuming you can get into one, they provide a quick easy manageable amount of time's worth of entertainment. Which is why I didn't lump them with either side. There's also the PvP aspect of BGs which one might want to consider separate from soloers, but I have no data on what percentage of players are keen or not on PvP.

[Darian]

That's 33.5k players on weekdays and 160% (800 / 500) (53.6k) on weekends. Note "worldwide" is specified above. Let's assume that there are 2 million subs worldwide (last I heard there were 4m), and let's assume that each day we get a totally different set of players (unrealistic), and let's be generous and round 33.5k up to 40k and 53.6k up to 80k. That's 40k * 5 (weekdays) + 80k * 2 (weekends) = 360k "raiders". Which is less than 20% of 2 million. And that was with me being generous (i.e. overstating the "raiding" population) every step of the way.
[right][snapback]95013[/snapback][/right]

Unfortunately, you were overly "generous" regarding the subscriber base as well. As with any subscription service of this type, you can rest assured that a large number of those subscriptions involve two types of people who can't possibly be part of the raiding pool you posit:

1) People who've been playing for many months, but only play a very few hours a week and still haven't even gotten a character to level 55 (thus not being the target audience for new content anyway as they're still exploring existing content), and

2) People who are relatively new subscribers, and still haven't even gotten a character to level 55 (many of whom are gearing their efforts specifically to be able to raid, thus being the precise target audience for new raid content once the expansion finally arrives).

These people make up significant numbers; for example, nearly 2/3 of Carpe Aurum fall into one of these two categories. If that proportion were to carry across the population as a whole, it means you'd be looking at 360k out of 667k, or around 50%.

"Hardcore raiders" may not be the lynchpin of the WoW community, but "players who have experienced most or all of the existing content" are always going to be more of a concern to any MMO preparing an expansion than "players who still have existing content to explore." If you're a very casual player who considers $14.99 or whatever a wise entertainment expense for 8 hours of playtime a month (and many people do feel this way), you're not likely to cancel your account because you're bored with all the content you haven't even seen yet. People who've been capped since January, on the other hand. . .

[lfd]

Doesn't the radical Silithus rewrite (targetted explicitly at adding new solo content for lvl 60's) prove this quite eloquently?[right][snapback]95108[/snapback][/right]

I don't think that was the sole aim; if it was, they failed miserably.

There are a few soloable quests available from the new Cenarion Hold hub; the rest are elites that will be difficult to solo (that's fine, challenging solo content is a good thing!) or impossible, depending on your class and build. These questlines culminate in a raid quest, for heaven's sake.

"New Solo Content", for me, is not adding the ability to grind endlessly for reputation (which is usually done by people trying to spawn the 5-man dukes or the raid-level lords, anyway, not people wanting to solo). Silithus was a disappointment for me.

The mobs are also some of the most annoying in the game, especially when you're trying to travel from A to B and get webbed by one of those spiders. The droprates for the collection quests also suck wildly.

Whine, whine.

[fractaled]

These people make up significant numbers; for example, nearly 2/3 of Carpe Aurum fall into one of these two categories.&nbsp; If that proportion were to carry across the population as a whole, it means you'd be looking at 360k out of 667k, or around 50%.
[right][snapback]95149[/snapback][/right]

You raise a good point. One wow census has 4m characters (higher than level 10), 900k of them at level 60 (only counting the US and EU servers). If each account has 2 characters on average (this is probably low), that means 45% of the people playing have a level 60. (I'll assume that the % of people with two 60s is low). That still means the raiding population is only 40% of the level 60 population. (And if you look at the numbers I previously mentioned in a pessimistic light, then maybe only 10% of the level 60 population).

[Treesh]

If each account has 2 characters on average (this is probably low),
[right][snapback]95198[/snapback][/right]

:lol: I'm sorry, but I had to laugh when I saw that. Not because I think the number is completely made up or completely out of whack (I certainly don't have any numbers to go on so you could very well be right), but simply because I've got over 20 characters myself. Now, I know that's certainly not the norm, but thinking about having only 2 characters in WoW is just a foreign concept to me. :blush:

/end pointless comment

[oldmandennis]

Edit: comment withdrawn cause it was stupid

[fractaled]

1) Census sites are not necessairly a good way to get numbers.

Point me to better sources please! :)

2) The site you picked only counts US and Euro.&nbsp; No Korea, China, or Singapore.
[right][snapback]95205[/snapback][/right]

I mentioned that above :)

And responding to the 2 character average, by assuming it is higher than that, I'd be supporting my own point, so I went for a very conservative number.

[savaughn]

I don't think that was the sole aim; if it was, they failed miserably.

...

Whine, whine.
[right][snapback]95155[/snapback][/right]

Here's the problem. As of right now there are a grand total of two mechanisms in the game for solo content.

1) questing
2) grinding

The problem with (1) is that once you've done it, you've done it. It's not a sustainable fun thing to do and as such ends up being ... what ... maybe one more day of fun for the bored lvl 60? Ok, new quest chain... done! What now? It's not a sustainable paradigm. It took them years and years to get all the quests into the game that it currently has. Devoting a good chunk of resources to solo questing would still result in only a handful of quests for each patch. This does not satisfy the requirement.

The problem with (2) is that it is tedious and decidely unfun.

If you put something in that produces fun results without limiting it, it becomes an instant point of abuse. The only limits the game mechanics currently support are either the low drop rate (grinding), the impossible to beat monster (raiding), and the one-time-only limitation (questing). That's it.

Of course Silithus doesn't satisfy. There's quite literally nothing you can do in the game that would truly satisfy. You need an entirely new game mechanic to satisfy.

And that's why I'm comfortable with the sustained end game being put off until the expansion where they can add an entire new set of game mechanics much more easily than they can put it into the running system. Plus the expansion likely has it's own budget and probably has higher resources committed to it than the team that's updating the running system (for financial reasons).

[Warlock]

I raid for around 4-5 hours a week (my guild just recently reached the size needed to run MC by itself; prior attempts with a guild alliance varied from disappointing to disastrous).

I PVP for perhaps an hour a week, if that, with several more hours spent sitting in IF waiting for BG entry. Battlegrounds are great fun, though I'm yet to win one (I play at offpeak time and am in the larger faction so pretty much the only opposition is an organised honour farming group). The latter is some of the least satisfying time spent in WoW - you can't instance because you might need to leave halfway, you can't level an alt while waiting, you can't leave the computer and do something else because because invites only come up for a couple of minutes. You can fly somewhere and do a little grinding, but you get dumped back in IF instead of at your grinding spot afterwards. I don't think this is anything Blizzard can fix (though being able to queue for a BG's from any inn and returning to that inn afterwards would help) - it's a natural consequence of an unbalanced population and playing at offpeak times - I'm just mentioning it as a reason that PvP is not and can not be the endgame for me.

The rest of the time I play, which is the vast majority, I look for instance groups or grind solo. Five man instances are great fun and the reason I'm still playing... but few people are willing to five man the zergable instances, Dire Maul lost that fresh feel a long time ago and it's a pain having to fix my chat channels every time I enter IF after grinding. I'm not sure whether I'll renew once my subscription runs out.